I'm using an FX-6350 and an R9 270X with 16GB of RAM and the game on an SSD. The demo looks like the map should be traversable much faster than it is, to the point of bringing a minimap to my mind as helpful (click on the minimap to jump around), but as you say Wine or more likely DXVK (if the demo is using DirectX) could be slowing things down. I'll check back for the native version and have a look. Plopping down objects seems suitably snappy though.
By 'Beyond the first area' I meant nothing more than the first sector. Although I only went to the first three star systems necessary to gather the three materials, then repaired and researched the first signal and the demo ended, so I was assuming nothing different was available on the rest of the map, which maybe I should not have.
The campaign sounds interesting, and I'm sure a score-based mode will have its crowd too.
Cheers.